Looking for Love
Without exception, getting the metaphorical rug pulled out from under one’s feet is the best thing that could happen to any of us, albeit scary. It is at our lowest that we stop wasting energy thinking about the meaningless and start focusing on the meaningful. We start looking for purpose and love. But how we approach this search is vital.
There is a reason why love is the thing we need and look for throughout our entire lives – starting with our parents when we are little. Love is the way we were made and what we are made of. However, we spend most of our lives looking for a very limited kind of love in all the wrong places.
That is not to say that the love we feel in our friendships and romantic partnerships, in jobs that we love or callings we have to a specific material goal is not valuable and beautiful and important. It is also not to say that there is no love to be found in the marriage we feel stuck in or the estranged relationship with our parents or the job we hate. It does call for the right focus, the right eyes for that which mostly goes unseen – God’s love in everything we do, with every breath we take! To put it in Paramahamsa Vishwananda’s words, we are here to attain who we really are and we are the soul – the atma. The soul’s purpose is not to identify with our problems and forget who we really are but to reconnect with it. The direction we are all going in is the one towards unconditional love; it is the details of our path, our everyday choices, that will help us ‘(…) reunite with Him with love, through love, because of love, for love, out of love’. (Paramahamsa Vishwananda).
Reconnecting With Your Soul
Paramahamsa Vishwananda teaches us that in order to get to know our soul and the relationship between our soul and God better, we need to engage ourselves in the reading of the holy scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita. Other spiritual books and knowledge might help us advance mentally, but no mere book can offer insight into the God-soul relationship and combine an understanding of body, mind, intellect, and soul that allows us to navigate through the sea of confusion and choices in life like the holy scriptures can. If we truly want to discover our inner selves, we have to make an effort and seek out that which nourishes our spirituality and our relationship with God.
Time and time again God incarnates on earth in form of avatars and saints to remind us of who we truly are. In the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 4, verse 8 Krishna provides a direct answer as to why He came on Earth. It is to re-establish dharma.
He goes further telling us that even though, as God, He needn’t do any work and sustain creation He does it anyway out of love, and as an example to the world - to every single one of us.
The Importance of Little Choices
We are constantly faced with choices from the time we wake up in the morning to our last thoughts of the day. These choices will either contribute to our advancement toward Love, feeling Love, and becoming that Love or they won’t. Of course, making a few wrong turns along the road doesn’t mean we will not grow towards Love, eventually. It is not like we could ever lose that Love. But when that happens, we usually stand in our own way, denying ourselves the opportunity to just love and be happy in the present and receive the blessing that particular moment has to offer.
The goal of true love and happiness is not to divide our experiences into good and bad and avoid the bad and only accept the good but to transcend this concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ we are so conditioned to. Because we are blinded by these limitations, we don’t fully understand the situation and its intricacies and therefore struggle with making the right decisions. How can we rely on something being ‘good’ now to still be ‘good’ another time? The same works the other way around.
This is part of why we need faith. Whether we have faith or not, God is always present and makes sure everything happens for the benefit of each one of us. It does require faith to take that leap and bridge the gap doubt creates between the mind and the heart.
This is the journey of the heart which the scriptures and spiritual teachers talk about so often. There is nothing in this universe that doesn’t trace back to the force of Love. Our very existence, every biological process in our body, every movement is powered by that cosmic Love that sustains everyone and everything. Making the right choices all essentially boils down to staying calm, being open to making mistakes without judging and attuning ourselves to the Divine in our hearts. The mind may still try to clutch at the material world, but the heart is aware of the Divine seated within and our purpose of loving unconditionally.
‘You know about it deep inside of you, because you are born with it.' - Paramahamsa Vishwananda
Like surely many of us have experienced before, people usually think of God and look for His guidance when they face desperation. But instead of only turning to God for help when it gets rough, we should seize the opportunity to go into communication with the Divine inside of us in everyday life. Every day is a gift given for that exact purpose! You can go after fame and riches, drive a fancy car, enjoy the pleasures of life but that is not the kind of happiness God has envisioned for you. This type of happiness is beyond that!
‘You have to reach the point where you feel love for God, where you say that the material world is not the ultimate of everything because all other wants will never finish.' - Paramahamsa Vishwananda
Whatever we identify with becomes our reality, that’s why it is so easy to get distracted from our true identity and focus on the material instead. The more we associate ourselves with our problems, the more we get stuck in our minds creating even more problems. Since we are all so different there is not one single solution or path tailored to everyone’s needs. How boring would that be! No, it is for us to get to know ourselves better individually and meditate on our purpose which allows for so much colour and diversity on our spiritual path. The uniqueness of each one’s path towards unconditional love is what makes this relationship to God in our daily practices so intimate and beautiful.
We can practice and see our true identity take form by surrounding ourselves with the spiritual insights and inspiration we need by …
- Reading and reflecting on Krishna’s teachings in the Bhagavad Gita.
- Listening to or reading satsangs in books like Just Love: A Journey into the Heart of God.
- Listening to mantras or kirtan – the practice of singing the names of God in a devotional manner, usually in Sanskrit. (Sanskrit is a vibrational language which means that upon hearing or saying the mantra, the meaning imbued in those syllables affects our thoughts and feelings accordingly.)
- Integrating physical practices like asanas into our day to calm our mind and align it with the movements of our body. For example, a bow or prostration is said to instil humility and uplift our heart since bowing down brings the head underneath our chest and the heart in an elevated position allowing it take over.
- Performing rituals like serving a deity or picture of a deity by simply offering some water, food and flowers establishes closer contact with God as we call upon him to sit with us. By feeding and adorning Him we welcome Him in our home and therefore, our heart. That way we can enter into dialogue with Him and get to know God as the loving, personal God He is!
- Making plans in our calendars to regularly visit holy sites like and celebrate the holidays in the company of people who share their love of God.
- Sitting down and reflecting on the unhelpful habits within ourselves and the attachments we need to let go of us so we can become the positive and open-hearted person we were meant to be.
You do not have to run away to a cave or an ashram to become a yogi. Learning to live spiritually, no matter where you are, is a key part of spiritual advancement and transformation. Learn how with our free guide on living spiritually in the material world.
